


All I've Ever Known

by Lexicon_V



Series: It's a sad song, but we sing it anyway [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Inspired by Hadestown, It's a sad song, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, it's a tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23896615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexicon_V/pseuds/Lexicon_V
Summary: Cassian was a poor boy, but he had a gift to give.He could make you seeHow the world could beIn spite of the way that it is.And Jyn Erso was a young girlBut she’d seen how the world was.When she fell, she fell in spite of herselfIn love with Cassian
Relationships: Cassian Andor & Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Series: It's a sad song, but we sing it anyway [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722400
Kudos: 11





	All I've Ever Known

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a few Rogue One stories sitting around my Google docs since I saw Hadestown last summer. I never figured I'd post them (or anything else) but here we are.

_Cassian was a poor boy, but he had a gift to give._   
_He could make you see_   
_How the world could be_   
_In spite of the way that it is._

...

“Rebellions are built on hope,” he told her. 

It was his recruitment line. He said it to broken people on broken worlds where they were desperate to strike back, to find allies. It was how he convinced them to join the Alliance. A lot of despairing people trusted his words. They joined, fought, and sometimes died. For some reason he kept living.

As a teenager, his first solo missions were recruitment. Even after he transitioned to primarily deep cover and black ops, they still sent him to recruit. In spite of the ugly, violent things he did, he could describe a free galaxy, how one person to make a difference, a future worth fighting for, that made any anguished sentient want to join. His words gave them purpose and hope. And although he was a skilled and practised liar, he did not count his recruitment pitches amongst his lies. The words came easily because he believed them, despite the price.

“The man with the golden tongue,” Kes used to laugh, when Cassian would land and a group of new recruits would follow him out of his U-wing like little pelikki following their mother into the river.

***

_And Jyn Erso was a young girl_   
_But she’d seen how the world was._   
_When she fell, she fell in spite of herself_   
_In love with Cassian_

...

Jyn has been with Saw for a little over a standard year when, one night, she woke with a constant, stabbing ache in her side. Saw told her, “To live is to feel pain. Bear it as well as you can.” 

She did. She tried. 

The only thing that brought relief was pressing her hand into her side. Whenever she released the pressure, the searing pain came back and overwhelmed her. So, she held pressure on the tender spot and staggered along, but it hurt, it hurt, _it hurt_. 

When Jyn couldn’t take target practice or run through hand-to-hand drills, Saw realized this was not just a cry for attention from a child who hadn’t yet learned to be hard. He took her to a discreet doctor in a rundown neighborhood of Iziz. 

While Jyn waited to be seen, the pain suddenly went away, like magic. When the doctor came in, Jyn told him she was fine, it didn’t hurt anymore. She felt a little dizzy and she was shivering, but she was okay. 

Later she woke covered in sweat and with a pulling, pinching sensation on her right side. Her appendix had burst, she was told. That’s when the pain had suddenly subsided. That's also when the infection had gone into her bloodstream and nearly killed her. It took days on a drip to clear the infection.

There was no bacta for the incision. She carried the scar for the rest of her life (though soon after it would be all but lost in a constellation of shrapnel marks.)

Blaster burns, puncture wounds, slashes from vibroblades, split knuckles, and marks from binders clamped too tightly on her wrists would all follow in time.

...

_“I was alone so long I didn’t even know that I was lonely_   
_Out in the cold so long I didn’t even know that I was cold._   
_Turn my collar to the wind_   
_This is how it’s always been_   
_All I’ve known is how to hold me own_   
_But now I want to hold you, too.”_   
_-Eurydice_

Life had gone on like that. She spent years holding pressure to the tender spots so she could keep staggering on. She hardly even noticed anymore.

“To live is to feel pain. Bear it as well as you can.”

She did. She tried. 

But when Cassian told her, “Welcome home,” it felt like someone had pried away the hand from her side. She was overwhelmed by pain all at once- the sudden, acute feeling that a total lack of love and safety and warmth had characterized her life. And it hurt, it hurt, _it hurt_.

She looked back at him, speechless, as the pain washed over her and suddenly went away, like magic. She knew that meant the infection had gotten into her blood. 

She loved him. 

And it would either kill her or she would carry the scar for the rest of her life. 

***

_“I don’t know how or why_   
_Or who am I that I should get to hold you_   
_But when I saw you all alone against the sky_   
_It’s like I knew you all along_   
_I knew you before we met_   
_And I don’t even know you yet.”_   
_-Orpheus_

She was stone faced on Yavin, but he could feel the anger and wariness radiating off her in waves. Like staring into the sun, it almost felt dangerous to look directly at her. 

Almost. 

But he met her gaze head on. Because there was no rage she could project that he hadn’t already felt. No wariness he couldn’t match. 

_The man with the golden tongue._ People always trusted him. (They shouldn’t. She shouldn’t.) The key was never trust them back.

“Trust goes both ways,” she had said, and he swallowed a mirthless laugh. Not in his experience, no. And not in hers, either. He let her keep the blaster and told himself it was a tactical decision. She was right- Jedha was a war zone. 

(And if she did shoot him, he had stared down worse deaths.)

Still, he couldn’t justify the uncanny sense of knowing her, the inexplicable need to touch her, to be near her, to find her and see her safe. It wasn’t until Eadu that he could name the feeling: Trust. He thought he could shoot Galen Erso and accept his death at the hands of his daughter after. One was duty, the other was justice. She would expect it. She didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust anyone. Whatever this nebulous thread between them, it wasn’t anything they couldn’t sever. 

But when he had Galen Erso in his crosshairs, he thought of betraying her and he could hardly breathe.

When she confronted him, the easy lies wouldn’t come. When he looked into her furious, accusing eyes, the calm voice and reassuring words he always used to soothe an asset (before shooting them in the back) died in his throat. He felt an unfamiliar need to explain himself, to make her understand. He let details slip that he never let slip. 

“I’ve been in this fight since I was _six years old_!”

Her file said she’d first been identified with Gerrera’s Partisans in 3264 LY. She’d have been nine. They had been raised as weapons rather than children. He let her see what this war was costing him, he had to believe that she could know him, how he got here, why he had to do this. He understood her rage. He trusted her to understand his.

She had scoffed at his line about hope. Hope had been beaten out of her early on. She fought in spite of it, not because of it. He sold hope to desperate recruits across the galaxy. But she wasn’t desperate for hope and he couldn’t give it to her anyway. But trust? Against all odds, he found he could give her that.

He told her, “Welcome home.” And he hoped she knew it was his homecoming, too. 

***

_“Now I want to hold you, hold you close_   
_I don’t want to ever have to let you go_   
_Suddenly the sunlight, bright and warm_   
_Suddenly I’m holding the world in my arms”_

He held her as the light grew brighter, closer, hotter. She ached with never knowing how his arms would feel around her except in this moment. He buried his head in her neck, trying to find a trace of her scent to bring with him into whatever came next. Somehow, she knew him. Somehow, he saw into her soul. But they had run out of time. They would never know the rest. Her hands clutched at his back. He closed his eyes, then opened them at the last second.

If it has to be now, let it be like this.

_“I’m gonna hold you forever_   
_The wind will never change on us_   
_As long as we stay with each other_   
_Then it will always be like this”_


End file.
